Chapter 12 335 Opera 2.0: Crowdsourcing The Stage Alessandra Carbone and Michele Trimarchi 1. The Twitter Opera at the Royal Opera House On September 4 th , 2009 a new opera was staged at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, in London. Its libretto was written by dozens of internauts twitting parts of the text and allowing the opera director Helen Porter to put the pieces together in order to build a plot combining music, acting and singing. Started on August 3 rd , 2009, it was the first experiment of opera being crafted by unknown, reciprocally stranger and not necessarily literate people, out of the traditional framework of commission and co- operation between a writer and a musician. The musical outcome was a mix between traditional and innovative music. The Twitter opera was not an isolated initiative: The Royal Opera House is deeply engaged in the active exploration of the web 2.0, with more than two thousands followers on Twitter, and more than eighteen thousands friends on Facebook; over one million people regularly view the Royal Opera House You Tube channel. The project was launched as part of the Royal Opera House's Ignite season to get more people involved in the creative side of opera. So the ROH has invited contributions to the plot on its Twitter page, publishing them on its blog after having provided the potential twitting contributors the initial part of the opera’s plot, Act One-Scene One: “William is languishing in a tower, having been kidnapped by a group of birds who are